Consumer demand drives investment in free range farms

An East Yorkshire business has consolidated its position as Yorkshire’s leading poultry producer with the announcement that it is expanding its free range offering.

Middleton-on-the-Wolds-based Soanes Poultry has invested in the first of four farms that will supply 10,000 free range birds a week by the end of 2017, when all are fully operational.

The first of the free range farms is just a few miles away from the factory and houses 4,000 birdsthat range and forage in a large grass pasture and enjoy a diet based on Yorkshire Wolds grown cereal.

Soanes Poultry’s General Manager, Nigel Upson, is looking forward to growing more free range birds: “We have seen a huge growth in demand for our free range chicken, particularly from high end London butchers and closer to home in Yorkshire. When the expansion is complete we will be marketing the product as grown on the Yorkshire Wolds so all the sites will be very local to us. We put this demand down to the quality and taste of our offering and the confidence our customers have in the husbandry, care and welfare of these birds.”

T.Soanes & Son is a family owned business which has been rearing and preparing chicken since 1947. It rears over five million birds per year on its Yorkshire farms and sells its chicken and game to butchers and independent retailers in Yorkshire and to wholesalers nationwide.

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